The emerging scenario in the USA, meanwhile, is a cost for the base ships that continues to hover around $450-550 million each, plus mission modules that bring the price per equipped ship to $600 million or more. That is no longer a cheap corvette class price tag. It’s a price tag that places the USA’s LCS at the upper end of the international market for full multi-role frigate designs. Even as future procurement trends will make LCS ships the most common form of US naval power.
In that environment, unfavorable comparisons are inevitable. A versatile surveillance and special forces insertion ship whose flexibility doesn’t extend to the light armament that is its weakest point, and isn’t flexible enough to deal with anything beyond token naval or air opposition, won’t meet expectations. Worse, it could cause the collapse of the Navy’s envisaged “high-low” force structure if the DDG-1000 destroyers and CG (X) cruisers are priced out of the water, and built in small numbers. That has already happened to DDG-1000/ DD (X), now that production has been capped at just 2-3 ships…

Especially if the low end has grown to a cost level thatmakes it equivalent to other countries’ major surface combatants, while falling short on key capabilities that will be required in the absence of higher-end ships.

*****

Nobody Wants the LCS

I thought the following from Hampton Roads.com, which really is about the fight over the Navy carriers, quite amusing:

Now a report on the plan for the littoral homeport indicates Mayport will be the primary base for the East Coast fleet when the ships are ready for commissioning. Each ship, estimated to cost nearly $600 million, carries a crew of about 50, is designed to operate close to shore and can provide intelligence gathering, ground support and serve as a local command vessel, depending on which of several modules is installed.
Compared with nuclear carriers, which have crews of more than 3,000 each, the littorals don’t bring nearly the number of jobs or spending. U.S. Sen. Jim Webb suggests that – instead of spending money to make Mayport ready for nuclear carriers – the Navy should send all 32 East Coast combat ships there.

*****

Bringing a Ship to a Knife Fight

Here are some interesting comments picked up at CDR Salamander’s site concerning the Cheonan, the South Korean corvettes that was sunk last week:

“…look at all the guns on that ROK boat.”

“That little corvette could kick the hell out of a flotilla of LCS. Glad someone else noticed. Definite cannon envy.”

“yep, definitely beats the hell outta single 57mm… plus has harpoons”

“Armed like ship of her size should be armed! Switch out the 3″ for 5″/38’s, and you would have a BUTLER, or RUDDEROW. Korea is still paying attention to how warships are really armed.”

“Looks like a nasty little sucker in a knife fight. Anyone else notice the crew size for a 1200 ton ship. No minimal manning there.”

Steven M Collins writes about current events from a Biblical perspective. Thought his analysis of the LCS quite interesting:

Two things come to my mind as I consider this new ship. It offers unusual capabilities to the US Navy, but it also is uniquely vulnerable. When it is operating close to enemy shores in shallow water, it will be vulnerable to any and all land-based weaponry. I hope that it was built with exceptional defensive systems because it will need them to operate that close to enemy shores. I hope it has a defense against the many new types of Chinese cruise missiles and the Russian-made, supersonic, “sizzler” cruise missile. This ship will not only have the unusual ability to engage an enemy close to its shores, but it’s ability to operate in shallow water will also mean that it can travel deep into a nation’s land mass via navigable rivers. The ship has torpedoes, missiles, and helicopters. With helicopters it can deploy US Marines inland as well. Its most immediate assignment might be the type of warfare that looms in the Persian Gulf. Iran has a strategy to attack US warships with swarms of small craft and suicide vessels. The USS Independence, if it is ready for operations, could attack the bases of all these ships right at the shores of Iran. My final thought is, I’m sure, shared by many readers. I wonder what weapons systems and capabilities this ship has that are classified (not acknowledged in any press release).

Did you get that last sentence? If I’m interpreting this correctly, considering all the myriad missions this obviously underarmed sloop/patrol boat will have to perform close to enemy waters where missiles and other nautical threats lay, there must be some secret wonder weapon onboard to defend her. You’re right Steven. Going to take lots of faith and a miracle if this ship is to fight anything thing worse than a drug smuggler!

*****

Cart Before the Horse

Here is N-LOS back in the news, fresh from failure to launch in recent tests. Greg at Defense Tech tells us:

GAO says the launcher was tested last summer, but failed due to a malfunctioning sensor and battery connector. The Navy expects delivery of another SUW package this year, this time with the launcher, but minus the missiles. As we noted in our previous write up, Army officials told us they think the missile’s targeting problems are pretty serious ones, considering how far along the NLOS-LS is in development. They’ve hinted they may look at a low cost alternative to the NLOS-LS.
Yet, the Navy is going ahead with delivery of the launcher. Why is the Navy taking delivery of a problematic launcher to fit in a mission module for an unproven missile?

Because Greg, its not about actually using the LCS in combat, but how really cool it looks chasing smugglers in speed boats. Plus, it makes the Navy appear like they really get this new shallow water warfare thingy. So if we can have aircraft carriers without planes, surely it is OK for the USS Freedom to go to sea unarmed! Because warships today are not meant to fight, duh.

GAO said the total cost of the LCS program so far, including research and development as well as procurement funding, was $5.1 billion, nearly 300 percent more than the $1.3 billion cost projected in 2004.

*****

What’s Klingon for “Lame”?

Scoop Deck’s ever vigilant Phil Ewing details the USS Independence’s (LCS-2) visit to Key West, with some locals liking it to a “Klingon Bird of Prey”. You Trekkies know what I mean:

There is one thing out of the ordinary, however — the alien bird-of-prey docked down on a long pier known as the Outer Mole.

The cabdrivers know about it. You can’t go far along the main drag without seeing a newsstand on which the Key West Citizen features an enormous bow-on shot of it, with the headline: “It may look NASA, but it’s Navy.” It’s the littoral combat ship Independence, and it definitely does look extraterrestrial compared to the ordinary fauna in these waters: glass-bottomed boats and boxy white cruise ships and the day-trampers bound for the Dry Tortugas.

Bringing up an interesting point, that the very large, trimaran warship is hardly “low observable” and would stand out like a sore thumb in a littoral environment. Unless your point is to scare the enemy to death! The cloaking device might come in handy after all.

most HSVs have their ride peculiarities. I would not draw too much for from news reports.

Pitching has alway been common with cats and tris. And quartering seas are the bain of their existence. I would be more interested to hear how she rides at 16 knots loaded fully and the resulting fuel consumption.

Mike Burleson said : “So if you run Independence at full speed at all times, it will be quite usuable.”

What this means is that both designs, – LockMart and GD/Austal -, offer poor seakeeping qualities at moderate speeds, whereas they’ll spend 75-80% of their times operating at speeds below 20 knots, as the CNO himself finally conceded recently :

“The amount of time this ship spends in this high-end regime, even though we need that speed, and we need that speed very much, as we are seeing down in the Caribbean and other places, the amount of time a ship spends in that regime is not going to be very extensive. It’s tantamount to saying, our airplanes are in afterburner all the time, and we know that’s not the case.”

“Independence had clear skies, calm seas and only moderate winds for its transit from Key West to Naval Station Mayport, but the ship rolls and pitches like a drunken whale. Early after it sailed from Mobile, Ala., the ship hit heavy weather and eight-foot seas, and wallowed so much that life was miserable for many crew members and riders. “I’ve never seen so many people get seasick,” one sailor confided; the Night of the Living Vomit is already a crew institution.“

Add to that the tankers and commercial vessels damaged though not sunk (because of their gigantic size) during the Tanker War in the 1980s between Iran and Iraq. One US warship hit a mine and nearly sank.

Mike is right; this is a neglected area of naval warfare, with all the emphasis on speed.

There are no unsinkable warships. From carriers, to battleships, to small patrol boats have all been victims of mines. The British lost a brand new battleship, HMS Audacious to a mine in the 1914-1918 war. There is an ongoing neglect of anti-mine and anti-submarine warfare in all navies. It is the obsession with battle force type ships, and S Korea currently is building some pretty impressive vessels which may not be so relevant in the type of conflict it is likely to engage in just off its coasts.

But Craig is right, no matter what you just noted. Those guns didn’t actually help the Cheonan, did they? That’s his point. Quite possibly, a dirt cheap mine – maybe a very old one – took out a well armed, capable ship. Stealthily. Unexpectedly. Or a torpedo did it, maybe – a torpedo costing a miniscule fraction of the Cheonan’s sticker price and running costs.

There’s no point explaining how ‘silly’ someone is for not acknowledging the ‘appropriateness’ or ‘typicality’ otherwise of the Chenonan’s equipment fit, when none of its equipment turned out to be capable of saving it. Craig sees the bigger picture.

I am lead to believe that when the USN started to move from conventional launchers to VLS systems they had a hard time with politicians up on the “the Hill” as the new ships appeared to have no weapons.

Looking at that nice pic’ of the LCS all I could I think is that there is an awful lot of ship under that solitary 2in gun!!!

The design of the Korean Corvette perfectly reflected the “Projected Operating Environment.”

–They operate close to land based air, so no helo.
–Conflict is likely to occur with little notice at short range, so they are heavily armed with guns capable of accurately delivering a high volume of fire, accurately, at short range.
–They will operate relatively close to home port, so they can use a relatively small hull, as sea keeping, range, and endurance take a back seat to speed and number of units. (They still manage to have a loner range than the LCS)

“According to program officials, NLOS-LS was tested in August 2009, but was unable to fire due to a malfunctioning sensor and battery connector. The program expects delivery of the second SUW mission package in March 2010. It will include the 30 mm gun module and the NLOS-LS launcher, but no missiles.”

ASW Mission Package :

“According to Navy officials, recent warfighting analyses showed that the baseline ASW package did not provide sufficient capability to meet the range of threats.”

“The Navy identified watercraft launch and recovery—essential to complete the LCS antisubmarine warfare and mine countermeasures missions—as a major risk to both seaframe designs. Watercraft launch and recovery systems have not been fully demonstrated for either seaframe.”

“On the LCS 1, the Navy is conducting dynamic load testing, but integration with the Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle—a physically stressing system to launch and recover—is not scheduled to occur until after the ship’s shakedown cruise. For LCS 2, factory testing of the twin boom extensible crane revealed performance and reliability concerns that were not fully addressed prior to installation.”

Design Production / Maturity :

“The Navy used a concurrent design-build strategy for the two seaframes, which proved unsuccessful.”

“Starting construction before drawings are complete could result in costly out-of-
sequence work and rework to incorporate new design attributes. Incomplete designs at
construction also led to weight increases for LCS 1 and LCS 2.”

Survivability :

“According to the Navy, this weight growth contributed to a higher than desired center of gravity on LCS 1 that degraded the stability of that seaframe. Acceptance trials showed LCS 1 may not meet Navy stability requirements in a damaged condition.”

Cost Control :

“Navy officials report that the earned value management systems (EVMS) in each of the LCS shipyards do not yet meet Defense Contract Management Agency requirements.”

“Until those requirements are met, cost and schedule data reported by the prime contractors cannot be considered fully reliable.”

Easily concur with you on that. So many reports and comments have provided us with the information regarding how LCS-1 is overweight. The addition of those two water-wing (just in case of an emergency) additions to the transom of LCS-1 further point to such a problem.

Craig,

Cheonan was properly armed for a surface combat-focused corvette with a secondary (minor) role as an ASW platform in the littorals of the Korean peninsula along the NLL (sea extension of the DMZ). She carried two 76mm/62 cal Oto Melara guns and two twin mount 40mm/70 cal Dardo CIWS cannon. Those are the sorts of surface weaponry necessary and needed to deal with the 1950s & ’60s-era gun, missile, and torpedo technology employed by most of the Norks’ patrol vessels. Cheonan also carried six Mk 46 ASW torpedo tubes and twelve depth charges; she also possibly carried two or four Harpoon cruise missiles. She was quite heavily armed for her displacement.

Mike … take a good hard look at the waterline on the LCS-2 in that picture you posted. Now go take a look at any of your past postings which has a picture of LCS-1 where you can see the waterline clearly. Notice any difference in the amount of black line above the water you can see? Guess which ship is more badly overweight and out of spec?

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